The Roving Task

After the visit with the survey team, we headed east to visit a roving task in Sepon District. Sepon town was right on the HCM Trail, and, as such, was completely destroyed during the war, and is one of the more UXO-contaminated districts in Laos. So two large bombs (as opposed to bombies or miscellaneous UXO like mortars, 50 mm shells, grenades, etc) were deemed safe to move by the roving team and brought to the demolition site, which is just a cleared area in the middle of the jungle, about 2 KM off the main road.

In the picture above, the roving team arrives with plastic explosives, detonators, and a big bullhorn, all to take care of this.

The team makes numerous announcements with the bullhorn for any villagers who might be foraging, hunting, or grazing their cattle nearby to clear the area, then prepares the bombs for detonation. A line runs from the charge 2 kilometers to the detonation site. For 750 lbs of bombs, 2KM is considered the safe distance.

2KM ends at this house, where the detonator box is hooked up, given a few spins to create an electric charge, and in this instance, handed off to me.

Because the charge has to travel 2KM down the line to the plastic explosive, you have to depress the button for what seemed like 20 seconds, but was probably more like five. And then, the explosion.

Afterwards, the roving team went back to the demolition site to ensure that the explosion completely destroyed both bombs, and we continued into Sepon to have a look around. We headed into the market, where there were few shoppers but plenty of merchants. I stopped to chat with a group of ladies sharing a meal, and one offered her 18 year old daughter to be my wife. When I told her I was already married, she said no problem, I could have a mia noy (minor wife) in Sepon too.